Mail boxes serve the primary purpose of providing temporary storage for mail between a sender and a recipient. Some mail boxes are needed only to receive mail until retrieved by the recipient. This is the case with mail boxes provided by the U.S. Postal Service at a central mail center, and other private mail box service providers. In these situations, outgoing mail is deposited by the sender at other mail repositories, such as separate outgoing mail slots of the central mail station, or free standing inside or outside U.S. mail boxes. Other mail boxes serve both as repositories for incoming and outgoing mail. Traditional residential mail boxes and rural mail boxes are of this type. The person assigned to the mail box simply places outgoing main in the mail box, places the flag in the up position, whereupon the mailman picks up the mail before depositing incoming mail in the same mail box. Conventional mail boxes of this type have a hinged lid to open and close the mail box and maintain the incoming and the outgoing mail free from the elements, such as rain, wind, snow, etc.
While the foregoing mail boxes serve their functions, they are not without various disadvantages. A primary concern with mail boxes these days is the security of the mail so that an unauthorized person does not gain access to the mail deposited in the mail box. With the increasing incidents of identity theft, and when mail often includes important information such as social security numbers, bank account numbers, passwords, etc., it is of paramount importance that mail passing through the U.S. Postal Service is maintained as secure as possible so that such private information remains confidential and not available to unauthorized parties.
Various mail boxes have been devised to improve the security of the mail deposited therein. Secure mail boxes are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,526,979 by Mann; 5,979,751 by Maddox; 5,992,736 by Parker; 6,244,505 by Grimes et al.; 6,299,061 by Henson; 6,655,577 by Mihaylov et al; 6,644,542 by Cox et al; 6,976,620 by Swider and 7,040,529 by Swider et al. However, these mail boxes involve numerous disadvantages and shortcomings.
Many of these prior art mail boxes employ either a hinged door or sliding tray that is movable outwardly away from the mail box in order to retrieve or deposit mail therein. The movement of the hinged door or sliding tray toward the person or mailman, makes the deposit of mail inconvenient. In other words, the person must stand some distance away from the mail box in order to allow the door or tray to be fully deployed outwardly. This is especially inconvenient in areas where the mail is delivered by a mailman using a vehicle. In this situation, the mailman must be careful not to drive the vehicle too close to the mail box, otherwise the door or tray of the mail box would strike the vehicle when opened fully.
Another disadvantage of the prior art mail boxes is that when equipped with hinged doors, the movement of the door to place outgoing mail on the bed moves the mail bed. In other words, when the person desires to mail a letter, the mail bed moves or rotates in unison with the opening or closing of the door to the mail box. This arrangement requires other complicated equipment and mechanisms to be employed so that when the postman picks up the outgoing mail, the opening of the door to the mail box does not inadvertently deposit the outgoing mail in the secure compartment underlying the rotatable mail bed.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that a need exists for an improved mail box that overcomes the problems and shortcomings of the prior art mail boxes. A need exists for a mail box in which access to the internal portion thereof for depositing either incoming or outgoing mail involves the movement of one or more doors sideways, rather than outwardly toward the person. Yet another need exists for a mail box having a door arrangement in which the mail bed does not move or rotate when the door is opened to deposit incoming or outgoing mail thereon.